THE last hours of the mujaheddin are terrifying. With the city they once ruled with the absolute authority of medieval caliphs now overrun by US and Iraqi troops, they have to keep moving. To pause even for a few minutes can mean instant death from an unseen enemy. A group of 15 fighters dressed in black and carrying an array of weapons ducked into a two-storey house in war-torn southern Fallujah. Their movement was picked up by an unmanned spy plane that beamed back live footage to a control centre on the edge of the city. Within minutes, an airstrike was called and the house disappeared in a giant plume of grey smoke. From a house across the road, the explosion flushed out another group of guerillas. Deafened by the blast, they stumbled out into the street, formed a ragged line and started off on the marathon to postpone their deaths, the drone dogging their every step. "The rats are trying to move about," said Major Tim Karcher, of the Second Battalion, Seventh Cavalry, as the figures flitted from street to street, seeking cover close to walls. Sometimes they can throw off the drone, ducking out of sight of the men with the power to summon FA18 fighter-bombers or 155mm artillery strikes. But they have no way of knowing.
And, increasingly, as they run they come into the crosshairs of American snipers, crack shots such as Sergeant Marc Veen and his long-barrelled rifle, Lucille. Yesterday morning he spotted a black-clad man with an AK47 assault rifle peering round a corner 450m from the villa where Cougar Company of the Seventh Cavalry has set up a forward base. He shot the man in the stomach: he fell, but kept crawling, so Sergeant Veen shot him again in the shoulder. Still the man tried to move away, so the sergeant blasted him with his 50 calibre machinegun.
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